Clarity
by White Russian
Summary: Fear toxin, the Joker, and an addict - two different POVs, two different situations. I can't be the only one who wanted scenes like these in the movies!


**Title:** Clarity

**Characters:** Joker, Crane, victims

**Disclaimer:** Characters not mine.

When he takes it, breathes it in, he knows that something isn't right, but the nature of addiction is cruel and oblivious, and he thinks that not even God himself could keep him from it.

His vision shakes and lights become brighter, sending vibrations through what he's trying to focus on, making him nauseous and frightened – he doesn't know when it will get better, if ever. When it happens, he burrows down into the stained couch, smelling several decades' worth of cigarette smoke and grease while he grinds his teeth. He sweats, feels it trace his temple and ear, and clutches at sticky fabric while whimpering and moaning. He wants to stop, has been told to stop, and can't, even when he knows it shouldn't be affecting _anyone_ like _this_.

He's lost friends and loved ones, gone bankrupt, torn his health and happiness to shreds for the cash to score some more, and the euphoric high, mixed with the overwhelming fear and crushing realization, is beginning to warp his mind.

Eventually, he gets in too deep, and the mob needs to protect its investments.

When they bring him in for more blatant persuasion, he's so high he's almost skipping, fidgeting as they toss him to the ground. He twitches and writhes, shaking and groping at the air with stiff fingers. The men who throw him down _vibrate_ and _hum_, eyes blazing like stoked coals and mouths breathing flame.

He whimpers, flipping violently onto his side. The high is just beginning, and he won't be down for awhile. When the main event arrives, they turn him over.

He's never seen anything so horrid, and screams tear painfully from his throat.

The creature's mouth is split from ear to ear, and his face is melting into his violet overcoat, bright white tearing through flesh and leaving bloody trails that leak to his lapels, singeing and burning. Maggots wriggle within the hideous slashes that pervert his smile, shining and dripping and _alive _in the sunken face. Pus drips, bubbling like magma, scarring the white and red. The mouth opens wide, and the jaw looks unhinged, letting his face fall freakishly down and back as garbled words emerge. Blood pours, soaking chin and neck and clothes, but the creature doesn't stop.

"You look _nervous_," the demon growls, gurgling and hissing and screeching. He shakes his head, and his hair simulates Medusa's, wriggling and slimy and primal.

During all of his other highs, eyes are bright and vicious, burning like wildfires. The most horrifying thing now, he thinks between screams, is that this creature has no eyes at all. Depthless black smears across the ridge where eyes should rest, erasing any emotion. Eyes are the window to the soul, a hint of the person inside, but this _thing_, mysterious and unimaginably terrifying, belies not a single shred of order or understanding.

He doesn't know when it ends – blessed unconsciousness comes. When he's lucid again, straps digging fiercely into his arms and legs, he's still screaming.

* * *

He was an affront to their manuals, the DSMs and case studies, flouting convention and expectations - it was a delightful _game_ to watch their faces and predict their reactions, and they recorded his smiles and giggles with squeaky lead and annoyed expressions, sighing.

Crane expected chemicals to break through the wall – biologically, he told him, he was no different than the other halfwits and freaks, brain receptors and norepinephrine still present (if only in bizarre amounts). He subdued and gassed him, restricting his movements with tight straps, and the Joker smiled wide as Crane's face stared back impassively.

The giggles began when Crane's head spun and morphed, wrinkled burlap replacing wire-rimmed glasses. His hands hadn't moved, body remaining upright and still, and the Joker doubled over with laughter, hands shoved flush with his body and twitching.

It was then that Crane was able to discern – and the Joker confirmed it later, stealing his own file for reference – that he could see people for who they really were.

Later, outside the mahogany walls of that office, he was intermittently shoved into heightened realization, and the confirmation of the way things truly were – the way _he_ saw them, uncensored and naked – was always enough to make him smile.

The after-effects were a glorious high, seeing the _normal_ people move beyond their own imposed expectations act like _that_, backstabbing and bludgeoning and killing. He saw a woman move from smiling to beating, cracking through forced politeness to express that inner _bitch._ A cop, stoic and disciplined, cracked the skull of that repeat offender, grunting with anger and frustration at the bastard who'd laughed in his face, at his authority, over and over again.

He swore it wasn't a hallucination – hallucinations don't have such smells, don't ring out with a such a lovely _crack_, don't give such glorious satis_fac_tion when they confirm everything he's ever said, and everything they've told him he's crazy to think.

People were always degenerate, always seething, coiled up and waiting for that _moment_, a pressure cooker of restrained tension and animal lust. He was always one to act upon it, to be a demonstration or warning of what anyone could be.

Smiling, he's always thought it hilarious that they've never bothered to thank him, or learn from what he's done. It was telling that they'd lock him away and ignore such blatant _warnings_, and hell, it was enough to make him stop caring.

"Fear," Crane said, back in his office, the Joker restrained and mildly sedated again, "it's supposed to be an undercurrent for everything. A constant reminder that you're never free of it. But you," he gave the Joker a look, barely disguising confusion and disgust, "I don't know what to make of you."

The Joker looked at him, head spinning, vibrations warping Crane into a vision of burlap and decay. He laughed weakly, drool seeping into his frown lines, and leaned forward.

"Don't worry, doc," he mumbled, smiling, "I know exactly what to make of _you._"


End file.
